New ETF From Adasina Social Capital Gets To Heart Of Social Justice Investing

Investing with a conscience is moving beyond environmental friendliness and sustainability. These days, social justice is an increasingly prominent part of the equation.

What Happened: Adasina Social Capital is addressing that niche for investors with a newly minted exchange traded fund: The Adasina Social Justice All Cap Global ETF JSTC, which debuted last Thursday.

San Francisco-based Adasina is “Black-owned and majority-operated by women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community,” according to the investment management firm's website.

In 2018, the founders started a social justice investing strategy known as RISE (Return on Investment & Social Equity). Adasina opened its doors earlier this year with CEO and co-founder Rachel Robasciotti at the helm. JSTC is the firm's first ETF.

Why It's Important: This year, new light is shining on social justice strategies, a concept ideal for the ETF wrapper. Some of the funds in the still nascent category are delivering for investors.

JSTC tracks the Adasina Social Justice Index, which aptly carries the ticker JUSTICE. That benchmark “is screened using both the Social Justice Investment Criteria and traditional ESG metrics. The index includes a global universe of public companies whose practices are in alignment with social justice values,” according to Adasina.

The company says the ETF takes a data-driven approach and focuses on movements regarding racial, gender, economic and climate justice.

“By sourcing our data straight from impacted communities, through close relationships with social justice leaders, we have the unprecedented ability to direct investor capital to the issues most critical to long-term change — this approach gives us a data advantage relative to other solutions," said Robasciotti in a statement. "We created the Adasina ETF to allow every investor to invest in line with social justice values, in almost any account, while still maintaining their relationship with their financial advisor.”

What's Next: With more than 800 stocks in its holdings, JSTC is a broad-based global ETF with exposure to domestic stocks, other developed markets and some emerging markets.

None of JSTC's components exceeds a weight of 1.77%. Familiar names among the top 10 holdings include Visa V and Nvidia NVDA.

The new ETF charges 0.89% per year, or $89 on a $10,000 investment.

Photo courtesy Adasina.